What the press commentators are saying...

Peter Wilby devotes his Guardian column to a trenchant defence of the BBC and damns "the supposedly patriotic right-wing press" for heaping abuse on Britain's public service broadcaster. It's an excellent piece.

By contrast, Stephen Glover in The Independent sets out to make trouble for a journalist, Frank Connolly, who has revealed all sorts of interesting facts about the finances of the Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern. Glover expresses surprise that Connolly, a Sinn Fein sympathiser, has been published by the Irish Mail on Sunday and seeks to bring that fact to the attention of executives at the paper's London headquarters.

Peter Preston in The Observer asks pertinent questions about the effects of anti-EU press coverage. Are papers really the cause of hostility towards Europe?